BaL 30.12.17 - Mozart: Symphony no. 38 in D, K.504 "Prague"

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I - V - I - V - V - I - V - I

What's "illogical" and/or "abrupt" about those "key chains"?

Nothing at all. But that isn't what happens in sonata form. Key changes are thought out. The music doesn't just switch with no transition. Also the development section spends very little time in the dominant key.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The music doesn't just switch with no transition.

But the end of the Exposition is "in" A major (the Dominant = V) and returns to D major (the Tonic = I) at the start of the Expo repeat - and the Devlt begins in A major ( = V) and the Recap ends in D major ( = I) so that with the repeat we're given a "switch" from I -V. So the overall Tonal scheme of the Movement is I - V (repeated) V - I (repeated).

Also the development section spends very little time in the dominant key.

But the essential idea of this section is a prolongation of the Dominant; it begins "in" A major and ends on an extended Dominant seventh on A - the tonal manoeuvres in between (what I think you mean by "transition") are an extension or elaboration of the Dominant. This is exactly the sort of long-term Tonal practice that we find again and again in Classical Sonata structures: the most simple, basic harmonic chord progressions are elaborated into more complex relationships, but the basis remains there as the structural buttresses.

[jayne lee wilson]

Do you never read a piece of music and hear it in your head?...or think of a new tune in your head to be whistled, played or written down later?

I sometimes see, and hear, my father in my dreams and memories. He died in 1999.
Three weeks after she died, I saw, and felt, my big cuddly fluffy black cat called Scroughie sitting on my chest while I was in bed, pumping her paws and squeezing her eyes at me.

The continued existence of either of these beings is a matter for metaphysical conjecture.

These were real experiences but nothing like the experience of holding them or hearing them both while they were alive.
Music is indeed experienced within imagination, dreams, memories, in the mind's ear, whether read from a score or not (I am personally unable to imagine any sound from a score. But doesn't a trained musician have to actually hear music, before they can do that?).
But it is still fundamentally different from the experience of sound waves upon the responsive ear and brain.
Why otherwise do so many of us seek to hear it, even the most familiar works, over and again, in concerts or in the virtual reality of a hifi system?

If I am unable to listen to recorded music for a few days, I feel sad, tense, less alive; I may sleep badly too. But recalling a work from memory, although it may offer some faint consolation, never has the restorative effect of the physical act of listening itself. So for me there is a real sense in which, without concerts and recordings - without performers - the music doesn't exist; and would never have been in my dreams and memories without them.

***
The positive therapeutic effect of listening to music, or singing, for victims of Alzheimers' is well known; it appears that in some cases areas of the brain associated with musical memory or response can remain undamaged. But the music has to be a physical experience for the beneficial effect to take place....

[silvestrione]

So for me there is a real sense in which, without concerts and recordings - without performers - the music doesn't exist;

..

Me too.

[silvestrione]

To try to explain my 'unless': the tremendous dramatic forte outbursts in the development of the finale seem to have been left behind once the recap starts, so it's a shock when they reappear suddenly. But there's no shock if it's a repeat of something you've heard and been startled by a few minutes before. Now you know it's coming.

All points like these are complicated, I know, by the fact that the listener may know the symphony well anyway, and there's an element of 'willing suspension' of that knowledge in our listening...but I'll leave it there.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think it's significant, though, that these "illogical" structural points aren't heard as such by every listener or every performer. The flippant suggestion is to notice that it's mainly those who are fond of older, slower, plusher recordings are those who want the experience to come to an end as soon as possible - but that's unworthy of the work and the discussion, so I won't mention it.

More seriously, my mentioning "buttresses" earlier made me (seriously) wonder if there is a difference between the way I experience Music - as "thawed architecture" if you like - and others who experience it as "narrative"? In a narrative, a repeat of an entire section would be bizarre - but "identical" pillars/columns are essential to support architectural structures.

Only mulling here - but trying to explore why there is such a vastly different response to these essential repeats.


But it's probably just what listeners are most used to in performance.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Only mulling here - but trying to explore why there is such a vastly different response to these essential repeats.

Well, you might consider mulling over the possibility that these repeats are not essential, and that hearing the musical argument (development) again is much less interesting the second time.



Off topic a little, I've just composed the shortest sonata form movement. (Well, I could shorten it by omitting the repeat.)

[french frank]

Off topic a little, I've just composed the shortest sonata form movement. (Well, I could shorten it by omitting the repeat.)

All in the same key?

[cloughie]

I sometimes see, and hear, my father in my dreams and memories. He died in 1999.
Three weeks after she died, I saw, and felt, my big cuddly fluffy black cat called Scroughie sitting on my chest while I was in bed, pumping her paws and squeezing her eyes at me.

The continued existence of either of these beings is a matter for metaphysical conjecture.

These were real experiences but nothing like the experience of holding them or hearing them both while they were alive.
Music is indeed experienced within imagination, dreams, memories, in the mind's ear, whether read from a score or not (I am personally unable to imagine any sound from a score. But doesn't a trained musician have to actually hear music, before they can do that?).
But it is still fundamentally different from the experience of sound waves upon the responsive ear and brain.
Why otherwise do so many of us seek to hear it, even the most familiar works, over and again, in concerts or in the virtual reality of a hifi system?

If I am unable to listen to recorded music for a few days, I feel sad, tense, less alive; I may sleep badly too. But recalling a work from memory, although it may offer some faint consolation, never has the restorative effect of the physical act of listening itself. So for me there is a real sense in which, without concerts and recordings - without performers - the music doesn't exist; and would never have been in my dreams and memories without them.

***
The positive therapeutic effect of listening to music, or singing, for victims of Alzheimers' is well known; it appears that in some cases areas of the brain associated with musical memory or response can remain undamaged. But the music has to be a physical experience for the beneficial effect to take place....

Jayne, I know from your contributions to the forum that you listen to a lot of music and analyse it well. Do you play an instrument or sing? If the former do you play from music or by ear and if the latter do you sing accompanied or unaccompanied, or indeed sing along to the recorded music you are listening to? If you sing along do you sing the tune or harmonise along side it?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

All in the same key?

What DO you mean? It modulates in every bar but one.

[Beef Oven!]

Jayne, I know from your contributions to the forum that you listen to a lot of music and analyse it well. Do you play an instrument or sing? If the former do you play from music or by ear and if the latter do you sing accompanied or unaccompanied, or indeed sing along to the recorded music you are listening to? If you sing along do you sing the tune or harmonise along side it?

For the record, I sing, play the guitar and drums, all in the same key.

[jayne lee wilson]

Jayne, I know from your contributions to the forum that you listen to a lot of music and analyse it well. Do you play an instrument or sing? If the former do you play from music or by ear and if the latter do you sing accompanied or unaccompanied, or indeed sing along to the recorded music you are listening to? If you sing along do you sing the tune or harmonise along side it?

I am quite unable to play an instrument or (as far as I know, the last, very distant time, I tried) sing. I never sing along to any of the music I listen to (although I'm sure I did, back in the day to Rock and Pop). I can just remember my father attempting to teach me on the piano, but - probably daunted by his own very evident, sight-reading, improvisational, prowess - I was all thumbs and soon gave up. Not that this should necessarily imply any thwarted, or untapped potential. I may (laboriously) fish out some detail from an imslp score (or similar), but if I try to follow one while listening, I always fall hopelessly behind, or get lost. So, somewhat counter-productive.

I often find very (over-)familiar themes from Classical Works forming jazzy, rhythmical, varyingly syncopated improvisations in my head.... a sort of musical doodling, I suppose. Or "Pleasure viewed from the Shores of Boredom", to misuse Roland Barthes. Beyond that dubious revelation, I don't claim any kind of musical creativity, let alone performing ability, at all.

***
I don't ever recall actually regretting my lack of ability to play the piano, or guitar or whatever.... always an adherent of embracing your fate, I concluded that, had I spent more time attempting to perfect, or improve, a practical musical ability, I would never have been able to access and devote my time to all the wonderful music I've spent so many wonderful hours actually listening to.
And I probably wouldn't have become an audiophile either. (Though I could blame Dad's hugely heavy, wooden-cased Akai-4000D, of which he made me the tonmeister of his own recordings, for that... (the early link between impressive engineering and sound....).

On Open Reel, I recorded the Top 40 mostly (Montego Bay, Alright Now, Ride a White Swan...). But I recall an early, fairly successful, effort from Radio 3 with the VPO/Karl Bohm in the Eroica, and thinking: if only my LPs could sound that good....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, you might consider mulling over the possibility that these repeats are not essential, and that hearing the musical argument (development) again is much less interesting the second time.

I have - and the conclusion is that they are and it isn't. Why do you think that other people - including both professional and amateur Musicians - find these repeats an important part of their enjoyment of the work?


(I was hoping you'd engage in a discussion of the nature of the D major Tonality in K405, but ... ah well.)

[cloughie]

For the record, I sing, play the guitar and drums, all in the same key.

isn't this just a tad restricting, your pitching must be good to get the same key everytime!

[richardfinegold]

Every time I play the Piano, I am reminded that the instrument is a member of the Percussion Family